Life, Work and Legacy of Carl Jung

Carl Jung Quotations 11

We find . . . in everyday life, where dilemmas are sometimes solved by the most surprising new propositions; many artists, philosophers, and even scientists owe some of their best ideas to inspirations . . . from the unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 25.

Anthropologists have often described what happens to a primitive society when its spiritual values are exposed to the impact of modern civilization. Its people lose the meaning of their lives, their social organization disintegrates, and they themselves morally decay. We are now in the same condition. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 84

. . . we constantly use symbolic terms to represent concepts that we cannot define or fully comprehend. This is one of the reasons why all religions employ symbolic language or images. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 4

The ritual act [of the Mass] consecrates both the gift and the givers. It commemorates and represents the Last Supper which our Lord took with His disciples, the whole Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection of Christ. But from the point of view of the divine, this anthropomorphic action is only the outer shell of husk in which what is really happening is not a human action at all but a divine event. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion.

Because a child is . . . small and its conscious thoughts scarce and simple, we do not realize the far-reaching complications of the infantile mind that are based on its original identity with the prehistoric psyche. That original mind is just as much present and still functioning in the child as the evolutionary stages of mankind are in its embryonic body. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; Page 89.

God always speaks mythologically. Carl Jung, Letters; vol.2; Page 9.

The sad truth is that man’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites . . . day and night . . . birth and death . . . happiness and misery . . . good and evil. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 75.

. . . one must learn . . . between intentional and unintentional contents of the mind. The former are derived from the ego personality; the latter, however, arise from a source that is not identical with the ego, but is its “other side”. ~Carl Jung; Man and His symbols; P. 22.

Greater than all physical dangers are the tremendous effects of delusional ideas […].The world powers that rule over humanity, for good or ill, are unconscious psychic factors, and it is they that bring unconsciousness into being […].We are steeped in a world that was created by our own psyche. Carl Gustav Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works 8, par.747

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. ~Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life, Page 262.

Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols; Page 75

Spirit and matter may well be forms of one and the same transcendental being. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; ¶ 392.

…a symbol of the unity of personality, a symbol of the self, where the war of opposites finds peace. In this way the primordial being becomes the distant goal of man’s self-development. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Paragraph 293.

This is certainly not to say that what we call the unconscious is identical with God or is set up in his place. It is the medium from which the religious experience seems to flow. As to what the further cause of such an experience may be, the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge. Knowledge of God is a transcendental problem. ~Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self.

A dream that is not understood remains a mere occurrence; understood it becomes a living experience. ~Carl Jung CW11; Page 497.

The hermaphrodite means nothing less than a union of the strongest and most striking opposites… The primordial idea has become a symbol of the creative union of opposites, “uniting symbol” in the literal sense. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Paragraph 293.

Faith, hope, love, and insight are the highest achievements of human effort. They are found-given-by experience.” ~Carl Jung; Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Even the enlightened person remains what he is, and is never more than his own limited ego before the One who dwells within him, whose form has no knowable boundaries, who encompasses him on all sides, fathomless as the abysms of the earth and vast as the sky. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 758

[If the unconscious is] […] properly dealt with in one place only, it is influenced as a whole, i.e., simultaneously and everywhere. Carl Gustav Jung, Letters, vol.2; Page 595

These biological considerations naturally apply also to Homo sapiens, who still remain within the framework of general biology despite the possession of consciousness, will, and reason. The fact that our conscious activity is rooted in instinct and derives from it its dynamism, as well as the basic features of its ideational forms, has the same significance for human psychology as for all other members of the animal kingdom. Carl Jung; The Undiscovered Self.

The greatest mistake an analyst can make is to assume that his patient has a psychology similar to his own. ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 498

The dream is often occupied with apparently very silly details, thus producing an impression of absurdity, or else it is on the surface so unintelligible as to leave us thoroughly bewildered. Hence we always have to overcome a certain resistance before we can seriously set about disentangling the intricate web through patient work. But when at last we penetrate to its real meaning, we find ourselves deep in the dreamer’s secrets and discover with astonishment that an apparently quite senseless dream is in the highest degree significant, and that in reality it speaks only of important and serious matters. This discovery compels rather more respect for the so-called superstition that dreams have a meaning, to which the rationalistic temper of our age has hitherto given short shrift. ~Carl Jung; On the Psychology of the Unconscious; In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; Page 24.

Every science is a function of the mind, and all knowledge is rooted in it. The mind is the greatest of all cosmic wonders. ~Carl Jung; On the Nature of the Psyche; CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche; Page 357.

Remember that you can know yourself and with that you know enough. But you cannot know others and everything else. Beware of knowing what lies beyond yourself or else your presumed knowledge will suffocate the life of those who know themselves. A knower may know himself. That is his limit. ~Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 306.

If we want to interpret a dream correctly, we need a thorough knowledge of the conscious situation at that moment, because the dream contains its unconscious complement, that is, the material which the conscious situation has constellated in the unconscious. Without this knowledge it is impossible to interpret a dream correctly, except by a lucky fluke. ~Carl Jung; CW 8; Page 477.

Dreams are as simple or as complicated as the dreamer is himself, only they are always a little bit ahead of the dreamer’s consciousness. I do not understand my own dreams any better than any of you, for they are always somewhat beyond my grasp and I have the same trouble with them as anyone who knows nothing about dream interpretation. Knowledge is no advantage when it is a matter of one’s own dreams. ~Carl Jung; Analytical Psychology: Its Theory and Practice: The Tavistock Lectures. (1935). CW 18: (retitled) The Tavistock Lectures. P. 122

For higher than science or art as an end in itself stands man, the creator of his instruments. ~Carl Jung; “Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung” (1928). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.737

Because we cannot discover God’s throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are “not true.” I would rather say that they are not “true” enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation. ~Carl Jung; Man and His Symbols

If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us. ~Carl Jung; The Content of the Psychoses; The Psychogenesis of Mental Disease.

What most overlook or seem unable to understand is the fact that I regard the psyche as real. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Paragraph 751.

The collective unconscious is simply Nature — and since Nature contains everything it also contains the unknown. … So far as we can see, the collective unconscious is identical with Nature to the extent that Nature herself, including matter, is unknown to us. I have nothing against the assumption that the psyche is a quality of matter or matter the concrete aspect of the psyche, provided that ‘psyche’ is defined as the collective unconscious. ~Carl Jung; Letters, vol. 2, P 450

Nature is not matter only, she is also spirit. ~Carl Jung; CW 13; Paragraph 229.

If I get another perfectly normal adult malingering as a sick patient I’ll have him certified! ~Carl Jung to Emma Jung. [Vincent Brome Biography]

Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. ~Carl Jung; CW 8, ¶ 420.

The art of interpreting dreams cannot be learnt from books. Methods and rules are good only when we can get along without them. Only the man who can do it anyway has real skill, only the man of understanding really understands. ~Carl Jung; The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man; CW 10: Civilization in Transition. pg. 327

True joy is simple: it comes and exists from itself and is not to be sought here and there. At the risk of encountering black night, you must devote yourself to me and seek no joy. Joy can never ever be prepared, but exists of its own accord or exists not at all. All you must do is fulfill your task nothing else. Joy comes from fulfillment, but not from longing. ~Philemon to Carl Jung; The Red Book; Page 341

This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darkness of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Paragraph 260.

The great problem of our time is that we do not understand what is happening to the world. We are confronted with the darkness of our soul, the unconscious. Carl Jung; Letters, Volume 2; Page 590 .

I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a “personality.” ~Carl Jung; [Definitions,” CW 6, par. 797]

Nothing is so apt to challenge our self-awareness and alertness as being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effective means of waking humanity out of the irresponsible and innocent half-sleep of the primitive mentality and bringing it to a state of conscious responsibility. ~Carl Jung; Psychological Typology; CW 6; Psychological Types. P. 964.

The alchemists projected the inner event into an outer figure, so for them the inner friend appeared in the form of the “Stone,” of which the Tractatus aureus : “Understand, ye sons of the wise, what this exceeding precious Stone crieth out to you: Protect me and I will protect thee. Give me what is mine that I may help thee.” To this a scholiast adds: “The seeker after truth hears both the Stone and the Philosopher speaking as if out of one mouth.” The Philosopher is Hermes, and the Stone is identical with Mercurius, the Latin Hermes. ~Carl Jung; CW 9i; Para 283

Similarly, other people are established inalienably in my memories only if their names were entered in the scrolls of my destiny from the beginning, so that encountering them was at the same time a kind of recollection. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 5.

From the earliest times, Hermes was the mystagogue and psycho pomp of the alchemists, their friend and counselor, who leads them to the goal of their work. He is “like a teacher mediating between the stone and the disciple.” To others the friend appears in the shape of Christ or Khidr or a visible or invisible guru, or some other personal guide or leader figure. ~Carl Jung, CW 9I, para. 283

Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 183.

Our unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But ‘the heart glows,’ and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. Dealing with the Unconscious has become a question of life for us. ~Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Paragraph 50.

It would be blasphemy to assert that God can manifest Himself everywhere save only in the human soul. Indeed the very intimacy of the relationship between Cod and the soul automatically precludes any devaluation of the latter. It would be going perhaps too far to speak of an affinity; but at all events the soul must contain in itself the faculty of relation to God, i.e. a correspondence, otherwise a connection could never come about This correspondence is, in psychological terms, the archetype of the God-image [q.v.]” ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Pages 399-400 and Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par. 11.

For indeed our consciousness does not create itself it wells up from unknown depths. In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the depths of sleep from an unconscious condition. It is like a child that is born daily out of the primordial womb of the unconscious.” ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 394 and Psychology and Religion: West and East, CW 11, pp. 569 f.

The self is not only the centre but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness. ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 398 and Psychology and Alchemy, CW 12, par. 44.

I’m sometimes driven to the conclusion that boring people need treatment more urgently than mad people. ~Carl Jung Letter to George Beckwith

The crucial point is that I confront the patient as one human being to another. Analysis is a dialogue demanding two partners. … The doctor has something to say, but so has the patient. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams, and Reflections; Page 131.

Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal recreation. And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions. ~Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Page 326.

. . . the self is our life’s goal, for it is the completest expression of that fateful combination we call individuality . . . ~Carl Jung; Memories Dreams and Reflections; Page 398 and Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7, par. 404.

We discover that this matter has another aspect, namely, a psychic aspect. And so it is simply the world from within, seen from within. It is just as though you were seeing into another aspect of matter. ~Carl Jung, Evans Conversations, Page 22.

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains. ~Carl Jung; Memories, Dreams and Reflections; Page 4.

Archives

(from the Red Book) Carl Jung, on “The Resurrection of the Christ Within” What is important and meaningful to my life is that I shall live as fully as possible to fulfill the divine will within me. This task gives me so much to do that I have no time or any other. […]

Archetypes are complexes of experience that come upon us like fate, and their effects are felt in our most personal life. “The ‘squaring of the circle’ is one of the many archetypal motifs which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is distinguished by the fact that it is one of […]

The Isha Upanishad offers insight into some core dialectics of enlightenment. Spiritual dialectics are resolved in the Innermost Self (Ātman), as a spiritual seeker realizes higher and higher levels of synthesis, until an ultimate dialectic is… More

Moksha मोक्ष is a Sanskrit word meaning “free, release, liberate“. This word is related to the Sanskrit word mukti मुक्ति meaning “liberation”.The root word of both is muc मुच् meaning “to be free” * . In his commentary on the Upanishads, 8th century CE philosopher and theologian Adi Shankara… More

In the image above, we see the Divine Child in the form of Ganesha. The Sanskrit word Ganesha is from gana meaning “multitude” and isha meaning lord “lord” [1]. Ganesha is half elephant and half human. In… More

Community

Fair Use Notice

Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.